San Luis student honored for her academic resolve
After dropping out, 18-year-old Murillo now pushes toward goals
SOMERTON — The last two years have taught Jenesis Murillo something about the hard knocks of life. But she’s turned those lessons to her advantage.
Having dropped out of high school when she became pregnant, the San Luis, Ariz., resident resumed her studies through a remedial education offered through the National Association of State Directors of Migrant Education.
She’s now scheduled to graduate next month from the PPEP TEC charter high school in Somerton, and she’s been named Student of the Year in the association’s remedial program, the Portable Assisted Study Sequence, or PASS.
Murillo, 18, was picked among hundreds of the students nationwide for the award, which will be presented to her at the end of this month during NASDME’s Migrant Education Conference in Portland, Ore.
Part of the criteria for her selection was an essay she penned, in which she related the challenges of resuming her studies after becoming a single teen mother.
“My journey through high school has been difficult, having become a mother at a very young age,” she wrote. “I had to leave school in the 11th grade. I had a high-risk pregnancy, and I needed a lot of rest.”
After Alexander was born, she began working in the agricultural fields.
“I worked packing lettuce,” Murillo said in an interview. At the end of a day of work, “I was really tired, and I told myself, ‘This is not what I want for myself. I’m going back to school and I’m going to college to become a nurse. From now on, I’m going to be an example for my son and I want a better future for him.’”
Murillo, the daughter of a farmworker, had attended Palmcroft Elementary School and Woodard Junior High School in Yuma before her family moved to San Luis, where she transferred to San Luis Middle School.
Entering high school, she admits, she was an indifferent student — that is, until the birth of her son, now a year-and-a-half in age, gave her a new commitment to education and to her future.
“Before getting pregnant, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t take school seriously and my grades were really low. But then I had my son, and I went back to school. I am doing everything I can to be a good example for him.”
She praises the PASS, a semi-independent study program that gave her flexibility to do work at home to earn credit hours needed for graduation while raising her son.
As the program’s Student of the Year, Murillo receives a $1,500 scholarship and a computer. She says she’ll use the money to study nursing at Arizona Western College.
Murillo wants to be an example not only for Alexander but others who find themselves in the same situation she was in.
“I know a lot of other young woman who get pregnant and leave school because it seems too hard. I wanted to finish high school to show my son that I could do it, that even though it was difficult having him so young, I could finish school.”